Making friends with Minecraft: the results are in

We first shared Dr Abi Thirumanickam’s promising pilot results in Autistic children the real winners from online gaming. Now the project is complete, the results show that Minecraft™, played with the right structure and support, can help autistic children make friends who stay friends long after the sessions end.

Friendships are one of the strongest contributors to a child’s wellbeing. Yet many autistic children face real barriers to forming and keeping peer relationships. Traditional social skills programs tend to teach individual behaviours, such as taking turns or making eye contact, rather than the broader confidence needed to belong in a group.

Dr Abi Thirumanickam, a speech pathologist who led this study at the University of Adelaide and is now at Deakin University, wanted to start somewhere different: with what children already love. Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world among neurotypical and neurodivergent children alike. It has no fixed rules, rewards creativity, and lets players build worlds together.

Her pilot, funded by a University of Adelaide Emerging Leaders Development Grant, ran six sessions with 11 children aged 10 to 12. With a $39,995 Early Career Research Grant from the Firefly Children’s Foundation in 2024, she grew it into a longer, more rigorous study. She worked alongside Autism SA, A/Prof David Hobbs at Flinders University and A/Prof Stacie Attrill at the University of Adelaide.

Her question was practical. Services need to know how often to run a program like this, and whether it works as well online as in person. If online sessions work, children in regional and remote South Australia who would otherwise miss out could take part from home.

How it worked

Eleven autistic children aged 9 to 12 took part in eight two-hour sessions on a secure Minecraft server. Some groups met weekly over a school term. Others met four times a week over the school holidays. Some played face-to-face at Autism SA, while others joined online.

Every session followed the same rhythm: a group huddle to agree on rules and goals, a block of gameplay, a 15-minute sensory break away from the screen, more gameplay, then a wrap-up. Trained facilitators helped with everything from technical set-up to managing frustration when a build went wrong.

The project was co-designed from the start. A Project Advisory Group of three autistic Minecraft players, two parents and two facilitators shaped the session structure, activities and communication tools. Members were paid for their time and expertise.

The team also observed each child across four baseline sessions before the program began, then in every session after. This let them track real behaviours, such as asking questions, giving feedback and resolving conflict, rather than relying on questionnaires alone.

What they found

The most meaningful result was about friendship itself. Five of nine children named a peer from their group in their circle of friends and acquaintances, and one of them counted that peer as a good friend. Another child reported still chatting with a group member online.

Parents’ quality of life also improved modestly, with scores becoming more consistent across families. Children’s social skills and social competence scores held steady, with small gains in most groups.

On the study’s central question of which format works best, no single winner emerged from a group of 11. Most groups improved slightly after the program. The low-intensity face-to-face group was the exception, and the team is now analysing the session observations to understand why.

The study also produced practical lessons for clinicians. Personality and communication style mattered more than age when forming groups. Facilitators who adapted activities to each group’s goals got the best results. Both online and face-to-face delivery had strengths, pointing to a hybrid model as the way forward.

A resource for every family

A lasting outcome is a free guide, The Minecraft Project: Facilitators and Families edition, co-written with the facilitators and advisory group. It walks parents, teachers and clinicians through setting up the game safely and running collaborative play sessions at home or in practice. The guide has been downloaded 488 times and viewed more than 5,100 times, and is shared through Autism SA’s networks.

Dr Thirumanickam presented the findings at the Asia Pacific Autism Conference in Perth in November 2025. Her team is continuing detailed analysis of the observation data and follow-up interviews, along with a scoping review of game-based interventions.

This is the kind of early, bold idea Firefly exists to back: research built on children’s strengths and passions, designed with the people it serves, and turned into something families can use straight away.